Fishes of the IV ester ?i Nort/i Atlantic 



87 



lb. One dorsal fin or none. 

 2 a. One dorsal fin. 



2 b. No dorsal fin. 



Narkidae. 



Indian Ocean in general, South Africa and 

 Natal to India, Malaysia, East Indies, southern 

 China to Japan, and New Zealand. 



Temeridae. 



Malay Peninsula and Cochin-China. 



Family TORPEDINIDAE 



Characters. Disc ranging from subcircular to elongate. Tail sector as long as body 

 sector or shorter, with or without lateral folds. Two dorsal fins, both of them well 

 developed. Tips of pelvics either separate from sides of tail or united to latter. Eyes 

 either well developed, with evident pupil, or obsolete. Nostrils either simple or sub- 

 divided by a cross bridge; separate from mouth, but connected by a groove with fur- 

 row surrounding mouth in some species. Mouth protractile as a short tube and with 

 labial cartilages in some genera, but widely distensible and without labial cartilages in 

 others. Characters otherwise those of the suborder. 



Remarks. The members of this family vary widely in general form, in length of 

 tail relative to that of disc, in the condition of the eyes (i. e., whether comparatively 

 large and fully functional or obsolete or nearly so), and in the extent to which the inner 

 margins of the pelvic fins are united with the sides of the tail. They also cover the 

 entire distributional range of the suborder, bathymetric as well as geographic. 



Key to Genera 



la. Mouth widely distensible (Fig. 20) but only slightly protractile; upper and lower 



jaw cartilages not bound together at corners of mouth by labial cartilages, their 



lateral articulation loose; tooth bands firmly connected with jaw cartilages. 



2 a. Tail from tips of pelvics about as long as breadth of mouth when latter is 



closed, its length from center of cloaca to termination only about 1/3 as great 



as distance from cloaca to snout; teeth with two or three cusps. 



Hypnos Dumeril 1852.'^ 

 New South Wales, Queensland, 

 and West Australia. 

 2 b. Tail from tips of pelvics more than three times as long as breadth of mouth 



36. Waite (Rec. Aust. Mus., 4, 1902: 180) proposed the name Hypnarce to replace Hypnos, on the ground that that 

 name had been preoccupied by Hypna Hilbner 18 18, for Lepidoptera. But this substitution appears not to be re- 

 quired under the International Rules of Zoological Nomenclature, as now accepted. Hypnarea Sharp (Zool. Rec, 

 J9, Index, 1903: 9) appears to have been a misprint, the reference being to Hypnarce Waite 1922. Whitley (Fish. 

 Aust., J, 1940: 167) points out that the illustration by Shaw and Nodder (Naturalist Misc., 6, 1795: pis. 202, 203) 

 of their problematical Lophius monopterygius actually represented a "beach bloated specimen" of the Australian 

 Electric Ray later described by Dumeril (Rev. Mag. Zool., (2) 4, 1859: 279, pi. 12) as Hypnos subnigrum; hence, 

 the correct name of the species is Lophius monopterygius Shaw and Nodder. We point out in passing that our refe- 

 rence of Hypnos to the subdivision of the family that lacks labial cartilages and in which the mouth is widely 

 distensible is based on our own observations (Fig. 20). 



